Faculty
- Paul R. Helft, MD
- Alexia M. Torke, MD, MS
- Lucia D. Wocial, RN, CCNS, PhD
- J. Eugene Lammers, MD, MPH, FACP, AGSF
- Sandra Petronio, PhD
- Steven S. Ivy, MDiv, PhD
- Patricia D. Bledsoe, MEd, MSW, LCSW
- Valita M. Fredland, JD, MA
- Susan Hickman, Ph.D
- Gabriel T. Bosslet, MD, MA
Paul R. Helft, MD (Director) - .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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Dr. Helft was appointed Director of the Charles Warren Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics in November, 2004. A native of Indianapolis, he completed his undergraduate degree in humanities, medical degree, his internship and residency in internal medicine, and fellowships in hematology/oncology and clinical medical ethics at the University of Chicago. There, he was a Fellow and Senior Fellow and Doctor-Patient Relationship Scholar at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. Dr. Helft joined the faculty of the Indiana University School of Medicine in 2001, where he is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine. His clinical work is based in the Gastrointestinal Oncology Program at the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center. At Clarian Health Partners, he is a member of the Ethics Committee and co-chairs the Ethics Consultation Subcommittee.
Dr. Helft oversees all aspects of Fairbanks Center operations and is responsible for the creation of its major programs, including the Fairbanks Fellowship in Clinical Ethics and the Fairbanks Program in Nursing Ethics. Dr. Helft’s own research interests have focused on the ethical aspects of doctor-patient communication. He is the author of more than thirty publications and dozens of abstracts. He has lectured widely on ethics and gastrointestinal malignancies, and has been the principal investigator on seven grants. In 2007, because of his work in creating connections in ethics between doctors and nurses, he was awarded the Victoria L. Champion Boundary Spanning Award from the Indiana University School of Nursing. He has taught ethics to scores of multidisciplinary professionals and created the core curriculum taught to ethics fellows at the Fairbanks Center.
Alexia M. Torke, MD, MS (Fellowship Director) - .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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Dr. Torke is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Department of General Medicine and Geriatrics, Indiana University School of Medicine, and Research Scientist with the Indiana University Center for Aging Research and the Regenstrief Institute. Dr. Torke received her undergraduate degree from Carleton College and her M.D. from Indiana University. She completed her residency in Primary Care-Internal Medicine at Emory University in Atlanta, GA, and then joined the faculty at Emory as a clinician-educator. During that time, she served on the Grady Memorial Hospital Ethics Committee and was a Faculty Fellow in Ethics at Emory University. She developed curricula in ethics and end of life care for medical students and residents. After five years on the faculty, Dr. Torke moved to the University of Chicago to pursue further training through a fellowship in Primary Care Health Services Research and Ethics, funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration. Under the mentorship of Mark Siegler and Caleb Alexander, she completed both the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics Fellowship and a Masters in Science for Clinical Professionals.
Dr. Torke’s research focuses on ethical aspects of medical decision making for older adults. While at Emory, her research addressed end of life decision making for hospitalized adults. Her current research focuses on surrogate decision making for older adults with dementia and other forms of cognitive impairment, addressing the process by which physicians, family members and others make decisions for older patients who lose the capacity to decide for themselves. Her research has been published in Archives of Internal Medicine, the Journal of General Internal Medicine and the Journal of Clinical Ethics. Since joining the Fairbanks Center in July, 2007, Dr. Torke has developed a structured curriculum to help ethics fellows in the design, execution and completion of their scholarly projects.
Lucia D. Wocial, RN, CCNS, PhD (Nurse Ethicist, Program Leader for the Fairbanks Program in Nursing Ethics) - .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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Dr. Wocial received a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN and her Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctorate degrees in Nursing from the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, OR. She has been in clinical practice for more than 20 years. Her clinical background is in neonatal intensive care. Her doctoral dissertation, Life Support Decisions Involving Imperiled Infants, examined parents’ experience with the ethical dilemma of considering withdrawing or withholding treatment from their newborns.
Prior to joining the Fairbanks Center in July, 2007, Dr. Wocial worked in a variety of health care organizations from small private hospitals to large academic teaching centers. She is highly regarded as a lecturer, educator, researcher, consultant and practitioner in the field of medical ethics, particularly as it applies to the nursing profession. Wocial comes to the Fairbanks program from the Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital, where she served as a Neonatal Clinical Nurse Specialist. She has been a Nursing Thought Expert Consultant for Web-based product development for Elsevier Publishing in St. Louis, MO. She has also served as a member of the Ethics Consultation service for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, and was a special assistant for the Commission on Determining Nursing Workforce Policy with the National League for Nursing.
J. Eugene Lammers, MD, MPH, FACP, AGSF (Senior Affiliate Faculty) - .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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Dr. Lammers is Medical Director, Senior Patient Safety and Quality at Clarian Health Partners, Medical Director of Clarian’s Senior Health Center, and Adjunct Clinical Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Indiana University School of Medicine. Dr. Lammers received his undergraduate degree from Birmingham-Southern College, Birmingham, AL, and his MD from the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia/Augusta VA Medical Center, and fellowship in Geriatric Medicine at Duke University/Durham VA Medical Center. He also served as a fellow in Health Services Research and Development at the Durham VA Medical Center, Durham, NC. Dr Lammers earned his Master in Public Health degree in Health Policy and Administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Since joining the Methodist Hospital staff in 1993, Dr. Lammers has been continuously active in clinical ethics. He served as a member of the Methodist Hospital Ethics Consultation Team and chair of the Methodist Hospital Ethics Committee. He became co-chair of the Clarian Ethics Committee in 1997 and served in that capacity for nine years while also providing ethics consultation at Methodist Hospital. Dr. Lammers currently serves as co-chair of the Clarian Ethics Consultation Sub-Committee of the Ethics Committee and is an active member of the Ethics Consultation Service. Dr. Lammers has also served on the Ethics Committee for the American Geriatric Society.
Dr. Lammers’ clinical interests include dementia, depression in the elderly and systematic approaches to improving care of hospitalized elderly, especially medication safety. Dr Lammers works directly with learners in both clinical ethics and geriatric medicine. Dr Lammers is the 2006 Tony and Mary Achievement Award winner in Geriatrics and Gerontology by the Indiana Public Health Foundation, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and an American Geriatrics Society Fellow, where he serves on the Public Policy Committee.
Sandra Petronio, PhD (Senior Affiliate Faculty) - .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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Dr. Petronio is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis, Core Faculty in the Indiana University Center for Bioethics in the School of Medicine, and adjunct faculty in the Indiana University School of Nursing. She has a B.A. in interdisciplinary social science from The State University of New York at Stony Brook, received her M.A. in social psychology and a Ph.D. in communication from The University of Michigan. Dr. Petronio was a faculty member in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Minnesota, and at Arizona State University in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication. She has also served as Director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Communication in the Department of Communication and School of Medicine at Wayne State University, and Director of the Speech Communication Area in the Department of Communication.
Dr. Petronio’s areas of research are in privacy, disclosure, and confidentiality studied within health and family contexts. She developed the evidenced-based “Communication Privacy Management” theory, publishing a SUNY press book “Boundaries of Privacy: Dialectics of Disclosure” on this theory. This book has won the Gerald R. Miller Award from the National Communication Association and the book award from the International Association of Relationship Research. Dr. Petronio has published five books, including one on HIV/AIDS and disclosure, numerous articles in scholarly journals and books, served as a journal editor for the Western Journal of Communication and for several special issues of Communication Research and the Journal of Applied Communication Research. In June 2005, Petronio was invited by the Consortium on Social Science Associations to give a Congressional Briefing on issues of privacy in Washington, DC, and is also the Immediate Past President of the International Association of Relationship Research.
Steven S. Ivy, MDiv, PhD (Senior Affiliate Faculty) - .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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Dr. Ivy currently serves as Senior Vice President for Values, Ethics, Social Responsibility, and Pastoral Services of Clarian Health Partners in Indianapolis, IN. His leadership roles include developing the institution’s philosophy and practices related to values integration, nurturing spirit in the workplace programs, sustaining both organizational ethics and clinical ethics programs, ensuring effective community involvement, and focusing chaplaincy, pastoral education, and pastoral counseling programs.
Soon after joining Clarian Health in March, 2000, Dr. Ivy envisioned the creation of a clinical ethics center. He obtained the original endowment gift from the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation via the Methodist Health Foundation which led to the creation of the Charles Warren Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics. He was responsible for recruiting and hiring the Center’s inaugural Director, and continues to provide counsel and support to the Center’s leadership. He participates in all of FCME’s programs and assures the integral functioning of the Center within the larger context of Clarian Health Partners.
Dr. Ivy has teaching appointments at Indiana University School of Medicine and Christian Theological Seminary with a focus on religion, medicine, and ethics. He has published in peer reviewed journals and has authored one book. His professional leadership includes responsibilities with several regional and national professional organizations as well as participation with local not-for-profit boards and church organizations. His previous clergy and academic appointments included Parkland Hospital, Southern Methodist University, Brite Divinity School, Nashville TN VA Medical Center, and Vanderbilt Divinity School. His M.Div. (1977) and Ph.D. (1985) degrees are from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.
Patricia D. Bledsoe, MEd, MSW, LCSW (Program Manager and Senior Affiliate Faculty) - .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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Patty completed her undergraduate degree in English at Franklin College, Franklin, IN, a Master’s Degree in Secondary Education at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA, and received her Master’s Degree in Social Work from Indiana University. In addition to more than fifteen years of ethics committee and ethics consultation work, she has attended intensive ethics training sessions at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and at the University of Washington in Seattle. Patty has been an active member of the Ethics Committee since 1992, and has served on the Ethics Consultation Service since 1998. Her areas of expertise include ethics education, clinical ethics consultation, conflict mediation, psycho-social aspects of end-of-life care, and ethical decision making.
Prior to joining the Fairbanks Center in 2005, Patty spent 14 years as the clinical social worker for the Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Indiana University Hospital. During that time she served over 1,000 BMT patients and families by providing psycho-social assessments, mediation and crisis intervention, individual and family counseling, continuing care planning, advocacy, and resource referral.
At the Fairbanks Center she is involved in all aspects of program planning and support, personnel management, and financial stewardship. She mentors ethics fellows and graduate student interns, coordinates the work of Clarian’s Ethics Consultation Service, and serves as an ethics liaison to several hospital committees.
Valita M. Fredland, JD, MA (Senior Affiliate Faculty) - .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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A native of Indianapolis, Ms. Fredland earned her undergraduate degree in economics at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA, her law degree at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, and a master’s degree in clinical bio-medical ethics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. She was admitted to the New York bar in 1993 and to the Indiana bar in 1994. In 2005 she became certified as an Information Privacy Professional by the International Association of Privacy Professionals and completed the 2007 Hoosier Fellows Program sponsored by the Randall L. Tobias Center for Leadership at Indiana University. Ms. Fredland’s career in health care services includes serving as a Protocol Coordinator in the Office of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, Senior Policy Analyst at the Indiana State Department of Health, and Director of Legal Services for Wishard Health Services, Indianapolis, IN.
Ms. Fredland has functioned in a multi-disciplinary role since joining Clarian Health Partners in 1998 as Associate General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer. She also serves Clarian hospitals as a member of the Ethics Committee and Ethics Consultation Sub-Committee by providing a valued perspective in the many clinical ethics dilemmas which include legal considerations. At the Fairbanks Center she is active as a content expert for the Fellowship in Clinical Ethics, serves as a mentor and project consultant for Fellows and graduate student interns, and provides legal support for FCME administrative affairs.
Susan Hickman, Ph.D (Senior Affiliate Faculty) - .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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Dr. Hickman is an Associate Professor in the Environments for Health Department at the Indiana University School of Nursing. She received her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College and doctorate in psychology from the University of Kansas. Dr. Hickman completed fellowship training in geropsychology from the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center and completed additional postdoctoral training in clinical ethics through the University of Washington School of Medicine Certificate Program in Health Care Ethics in 2001. Prior to relocating to Indiana, she was on faculty at the Oregon Health & Science University School of Nursing and was a Senior Scholar in the Center for Ethics in Health Care. She also served as a co-chair of the OHSU Institutional Review Board and is a member of the National POLST (Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment) Paradigm Task Force.
Dr. Hickman’s research focuses on ethical issues in end-of-life care and in research. Her work in end-of-life care includes a federally funded multi-state study on use of the POLST in nursing facilities. The POLST is designed to document patient treatment preferences in the form of immediately actionable medical orders that follow the patient throughout the healthcare system. Programs based on this model are currently being used or in development in approximately 30 states, but it is currently not available in Indiana. Dr. Hickman also has federal funding to study the effect of ethical concerns on the conduct of end-of-life research, building on prior work supported by The Greenwall Foundation to evaluate ethical issues in community-based research. Her research has been published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, the Journal of Palliative Medicine, and the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics.
Gabriel T. Bosslet, MD, MA (Affiliate Faculty) - .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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Dr. Bosslet is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine in the Department of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Allergy, and Sleep Medicine, and is the Associate Fellowship Director for Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. Dr. Bosslet received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and his M.D. from The Ohio State University. He completed his residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at The Ohio State University/Columbus Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. During his time as a resident, he served on the ethics committee for The Ohio State University Hospital, and received the Sarah Medwid Gorseline memorial award for enthusiasm in the practice of medicine, and the Arnold P. Gold Humanism in Medicine award. Dr. Bosslet completed his fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Indiana University, where he was chief fellow in his final year of training. During this time, he completed the Clinical Ethics Fellowship at the Charles Warren Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics, and a Master of Arts in Philosophy and Bioethics from Indiana University. Dr. Bosslet’s interests include the effects of online social networks in the doctor-patient relationship, and medical futility and goal conflict in the intensive care unit.